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Humanism has mostly considered the question “What does it mean to be human?” from a Western perspective. Dabashi asks it anew from a non-European perspective, in a groundbreaking study of 1,400 years of Persian literary humanism. He presents the unfolding of this vast tradition as the creative and subversive subconscious of Islamic civilization.

Integrating forgotten tales of literary communities across Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia - at a time when Islamic empires were fracturing and new state formations were emerging - this book offers a more global understanding of Persian literary culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. It challenges the manner in which Iranian nationalism has infilitrated Persian literary history writing and recovers the multi-regional breadth and vibrancy of a global lingua franca connecting peoples and places across Islamic Eurasia. Focusing on 3 case studies (18th-century Isfahan, a small court in South India and the literary climate of the Anglo-Afghan war), it reveals the literary and cultural ties that bound this world together as well as some of the trends that broke it apart.

Some justification seems to be necessary for the addition of yet another History of Iranian Literature to the number of those already in existence. Such a work must obviously contain as many novel features as possible, so that a short explanation of what my collaborators and I had in mind when planning the book is perhaps not superfluous. In the first place our object was to present a short summary of the material in all its aspects, and secondly to review the subject from the chronological, geo graphical and substantial standpoints - all within the compass of a single volume. Such a scheme precludes a formal and complete enumeration of names and phenom ena, and renders all the greater the obligation to accord most prominence to matters deemed to be of greatest importance, supplementing these with such figures and forms as will enable an impression to be gained of the period in question - all this is far as possible in the light of the most recent discoveries. A glance at the table of contents will suffice to give an idea of the multifarious approach that has been our aim. We begin at the very first traces of evidence bearing on our subject and continue the narrative up to the present day. Geographically the book embraces Iran and its neighbouring countries, while it should be remarked that Iranian literature in its fullest sense also includes Indo-Persian and Judeo-Persian works.

Browne's famous work, first published in 1902, was the essential text on literary history in Persian studies for many years. As an overview of Persian literature from the earliest times until Firdawsi, it continues to be a valuable reference. Out of print for some time, it is now reissued as a library edition, in facsimile to capture the feel of the original edition.